• Dojan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Using someone’s preferred pronouns isn’t woke, it’s basic human decency.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Using someone’s preferred pronouns isn’t woke, it’s basic human decency.

      Basic human decency is woke.

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        These terms tend to get abused by jerks so much that they start to mean something else. I have seen too many people identifying as “woke” who use bullying as a method of getting their way, lack compassion for anyone who doesn’t share their views, shaming others, and are generally tribalistic.

        Basic human decency would be to see the person behind a political view and understand that they have fears and pains, to be curious about them and try to understand where they’re coming from. And then talk with them from a place of compassion. We’re all a product of our genes and experiences, and everybody is a hero in their own story.

        Elon too, while misguided, wants to do good. But look at how his dad has treated him growing up: called him an idiot his entire life, impregnated his step sister, and emotionally and physically abused him. Plus I’m pretty sure he’s neurodivergent. If anybody wants to get him to see the error of his ways, more abusive language is certainly not going to help. He’s being pushed into a corner and in his mind he sees a world that is increasingly broken by vile people who don’t understand him or his vision for improving the world. I think he believes his own words when he talks about “neutral” politics, but his idea of neutral has been severely skewed. Elon has in fact done a lot of good for the world, but he needs people he trust to keep his feet on the ground. That can’t be achieved by chastising him, but by praising the things he does well and getting him to spend more time among “normal” people and good role models. In the meantime though, to protect the world from powerful broken men, we need regulation to keep them fenced off.

        • ram@bookwormstory.social
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          1 year ago

          Elon too, while misguided, wants to do good

          There’s no reason to believe this.

          But look at how his dad has treated him growing up

          An explanation as to why someone’s a bad person doesn’t make them less bad.

          Plus I’m pretty sure he’s neurodivergent.

          He’s autistic. Most autistic people aren’t narcissistic megalomaniacs, and if they are, they should be called out for it.

          If anybody wants to get him to see the error of his ways, more abusive language is certainly not going to help.

          A moot point, he will not accept anything but the yes men he grew up around and lived the last 52 years being applauded by.

          He’s being pushed into a corner and in his mind he sees a world that is increasingly broken by vile people who don’t understand him or his vision for improving the world.

          I do understand his vision, and the vision is broken and harmful.

          Elon has in fact done a lot of good for the world, but he needs people he trust to keep his feet on the ground.

          He has? Like his racially segregated factories? Or the monkeys he experiments on the brains of?

          That can’t be achieved by chastising him, but by praising the things he does well and getting him to spend more time among “normal” people and good role models

          This is ineffective with people in such a power position.

          In the meantime though, to protect the world from powerful broken men, we need regulation to keep them fenced off.

          Agreed.

          Ultimately, Elon Musk is a genuinely harmful and bad person, who is both uncritically malicious to those who dare criticize him, and is incredibly foolish at every endeavour he involves himself in. “His” successes come as a result of people he hired walling him off in his companies so that he continues to invest in technologies while being blind to any important part of production he might find interesting enough to meddle in.

          Your take on him is one I can empathize with, and I even held myself for a while, but at the end of the day, it’s a benefit of the doubt he expressly does not deserve.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah I want to believe everyone including him is actively a moral actor trying to make the best world they can, but I know better. His motivations aren’t subtle. He desperately wants to be admired and seen as cool and smart. That’s fine when handled responsibly, but he isn’t. He left his wife once he became rich. He went on a crusade against trans people when his daughter came out as trans and said she hates billionaires. He’s become 4chan because when he says shitty right wing bullshit they praise him. He’s probably still seeing himself as a bullied nerd getting picked on by people cooler than him, or maybe he sees it as he’s getting his nerds revenge. But either way, it’s clear he’s more concerned with being the underdog hero of his favorite type of story than building a world worth living in.

        • Necronomicommunist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Maybe this is somehow enlightening to someone who has never considered someone they (morally, religiously, ethically, politically) oppose human, but I am aware of all this and recognise that Elon Musk is still a piece of shit whose bigotry has made him hated in public and his private life. Over and over he makes the choice to be a dog turd, and that’s not somehow the fault of wokies, even when they’re misguided. It’s like when racists say “well they kept calling me a racist for no good reason, so now I actually am”. He’s not a 4 year old that just needs to be gentle parented. He’s a full-grown adult that needs to stop perpetually throwing temper tantrums when someone disagrees with him.

          • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            But he’s not going to do that on his own. Stop thinking in terms of whose fault it is and instead think about what is effective. Yes, the racist is a bigot but he’s also right: the treatment he was subjected to did result in him becoming more racist. So if you truly want fewer racists in the world, look for another strategy. That is the adult thing to do.

            Edit: I should add that I reject the idea of anyone making a choice. Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing; it’s all cause and effect. The behavior we are seeing from Elon Musk now is caused by his genes, how he was brought up, and how people are treating him. We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

            • ram@bookwormstory.social
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              1 year ago

              I should add that I reject the idea of anyone making a choice. Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing; it’s all cause and effect. The behavior we are seeing from Elon Musk now is caused by his genes, how he was brought up, and how people are treating him. We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

              Is this how you excuse any wrongdoing of any person who’s ever existed? Holding people accountable, both in private and public, is a part of that influence upon who he is. At this point, I’m comfortable saying Elon Musk is a lost cause, and the best thing we can do is make him less capable of harming society yet further.

              Not everyone gets a redemption arc, that’s only a thing in novels. Elon Musk has no desire to understand normal people, and that’s something is simply impossible to contend with.

              • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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                1 year ago

                Tigers are dangerous animals that sometimes eat people. They have brains, they make “choices” in the sense that there is a decision process going on in their brains. When a tiger eats a human we can call that tiger “evil”, maybe try to get back at it by torturing it to teach it a lesson.

                If I tell you that this is just in the nature of tigers, and torturing the tiger does little to prevent tigers from eating humans in the future, then that’s not an “excuse”. The word is kind of meaningless in this context. If we don’t want to get eaten by tigers we can stay away from tigers, or keep them locked up, or possibly kill all of them (not as “revenge” but as a preventative measure). Moralizing their behavior does little to prevent future deaths. We used to have trials for animals, but we grew out of that.

                So I disagree with your categorization of this as an excuse. I’m not excusing anything, and I’m not promoting a redemption - that too is a concept steeped in the idea that people have choices. But I agree with you that holding people accountable can be an effective way to influence people. We have a justice system both to rehabilitate people from repeating crimes, and to discourage people from committing crimes in the first place. The key is to think rationally about how to influence people in an effective way. I’d argue that the prison system in the US, for example, has not been effective in preventing crime because it forgets both about the rehabilitation part and the socioeconomic factors that make people commit crimes. And much of the reason for this is the religious conditioning that causes people to get caught up moralizing and seeking vengeance instead of keeping their eyes on the end goal.

                Elon may very well be a lost cause as you say. Even so, I believe chastising him on social media is making things worse, not better, so the people who do that are not acting rationally. The adult approach is to think about an effective way to prevent him from doing more damage while not giving the wrong signals to the rest of society. He has a tail of followers so care needs to be taken that he doesn’t become a martyr for them.

                • ram@bookwormstory.social
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                  1 year ago

                  I don’t agree with punitive “justice”. It’s ineffective, bad, and wrong.

                  But I do agree that, while rehabilitative justice takes place, we must protect society from those who are doing harm to others.

                  The adult approach is to think about an effective way to prevent him from doing more damage while not giving the wrong signals to the rest of society.

                  Your “adult approach” allows him to continue to freely do harm to people, and in no way addresses it nor the harm those who think he’s acceptable perpetuate.

                  He has a tail of followers so care needs to be taken that he doesn’t become a martyr for them.

                  This is another excuse to do nothing.

                  • Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
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                    1 year ago

                    I don’t see em suggesting any particular solutions, so I’m not sure what you are criticizing or why you think it would result in Elon remaining at large any more than from figurative fruit throwing.

                    I agree that social repercussions have a place, but I also agree that it is only “good enough” for many – but not all – situations. Seeking a more sophisticated approach based on studying and identifying potential root causes seems to me like it would be more sustainable, not to mention an opportunity for individual growth.

              • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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                1 year ago

                No, choice is universally an illusion. The things I am saying here are also the effect of past events, as is the fact that you responded. The point I’m trying to get across is that moralizing and saying things like “he’s an adult, he should change his behavior on his own” is wishful thinking and neglects a rational approach to what will actually achieve what you want.

                • ram@bookwormstory.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Determinism is actually a really silly argument to make for anything. Determinism doesn’t posit that people don’t make choices, but simply that the choices made are determinable, even if they in every way resemble “free choice”. We are a part of the variables that determinism says contributes to these choices, but your solution is we sit with a sock in our mouth because it’s so very mean to tell Elon he’s a cunt “because he has no choice”. You’re, put plainly, a fool, if you believe for a second that predetermined choices make someone any less of an asshole. Elon Musk is a harmful, narcissistic asshole is no different than “the total result of Elon Musk’s predetermined decisions are to behave as a narcissitic asshole.”

                  Yes, under determinism, he has no choice in the matter, just as a gun used to kill someone has no choice in being a killing machine, or a pencil in a 4th grade classroom has no choice in being a penis drawer.

                  Deterministic sophistry being used to soften, excuse, or in any way lessen the value of peoples’ individual actions is mere sophistry, and completely misses the point of the philosophical theory.

                  • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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                    1 year ago

                    You’re right, it’s a bit silly to claim that people don’t make choices. I use the word “choice” all the time for something that I believe is happening in me and in others. The AI in a computer game also makes choices, every if/else statement in a piece of software is a choice. It comes down to what people mean with the word. What I disagree with is the notion that there’s something ethereal happening that decides if a person “deserves” to be spit and kicked on - just on account of them being morally reprehensible and not based on any meaningful analysis of what would improve the situation.

                    but your solution is we sit with a sock in our mouth because it’s so very mean to tell Elon he’s a cunt “because he has no choice”.

                    That’s misrepresenting what I’m saying. I’m absolutely not saying that we should just let him go on because he has no choice. That would be like letting an alligator roam free in the city because “it’s just doing what alligators do.” But to kick and spit on the alligator “because it’s evil” isn’t a good strategy either.

                    I’m saying Elon is a problem, and to fix the problem we should analyze what is causing the problem and devise a rational plan of action that will mitigate that as much as possible. At its core it’s a question of mindset - are you just letting your anger out because he’s the devil, or are you keeping a cool head and thinking about how to attack the problem at its root. Ultimately the goal should be to make the future better, not to exact retribution for the past.

                    The part about not being mean is not because I think he should be excused from his actions. It’s because I think that being mean is counterproductive. It’s pushing him further into the hole where we don’t want him to be.

                    It’s like debugging a computer program: we don’t yell and curse at the program for having bugs; we try to figure out what is causing the bugs and fix them without being overcome by emotion.

                • Necronomicommunist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  It’s incredibly rational to dunk on an idiot with a superiority complex.

                  Why do you think getting a point across matters? When getting a point across to Elon Musk it isn’t worth it since he’s got no free will.

                  • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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                    1 year ago

                    Free will has nothing to do with the ability to be influenced, in fact you might even say the opposite is closer to reality. The more predictable something is, the easier it is to influence it. I’m sure you agree that your computer has no free will, and you can easily get it to do different things just by clicking the mouse.

                    So what’s the rationale for dunking on an idiot? Do you believe that people shitting on Musk on Twitter will actually cause him to be more woke and compassionate toward others?

            • Dojan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing
              We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

              Bullshit.

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              I should add that I reject the idea of anyone making a choice. Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing; it’s all cause and effect. The behavior we are seeing from Elon Musk now is caused by his genes, how he was brought up, and how people are treating him. We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

              We can’t control any of these three things because I am unable to make a choice in how I treat him. My behavior in how I treat Elon Musk is caused by my genes, how I was brought up, and how people are treating me.

              So with that in mind: Elon Musk is an idiot causing actual harm to the world and people need to stop enabling this piece of shit. The world would be a better place if he lost all his money and was a poor man with no platform to spread his hateful ideas.

        • gila@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Bollocks. I don’t believe you have seen too many people identifying as woke. People that hold the beliefs you’re talking about don’t generally identify as woke. You’re talking about attitudes attributed to wokedom entirely by conservatives trying to rile up their base. They’re using moral panic via the culture war to politically destabilise in an environment where they have no policy to bring to the table that anyone wants, and you’ve fallen for it. Go consume some actual leftist content and try to critique it the way you are now in good faith. You won’t be able to.

          • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            I don’t consume much right-wing content. This is mostly from interacting with people online who identify as left wing/woke, e.g. on Reddit, Twitter and TikTok.

            • gila@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Have you considered that those aren’t the best places to get a good sense of the rational argument behind increased awareness of social inequalities? All the described platforms skew toward younger audiences and ineffective moderation - you were likely talking to literal children trying to come to terms with their inability to reconcile their morality with their environment, especially from areas that skew conservative.

              When I said actual leftist content I meant, pick an example of a person identifying as woke whose view you don’t share, then vet your position by investigating the opposing argument and reflect on whether that person was offering a fair and balanced representation of that argument. If it isn’t, then you can’t attribute their slant to the school of thought they claim to represent solely based on your subjective experience reading comments on social media.

    • Blue@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Motherfuckers calling each other by their online nicknames since wow released in 2004, now complaining about someone asking to be called certain way.

      • Mango@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As a straight dude, I’m not about to call another dude ‘miss’. Don’t force me into your convention.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          As a straight dude, if another dude insisted on seeing a woman’s genitals before calling her ‘miss’ I would punch him in the face.

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Ah yes, because acting with basic decency towards a [TYPE OF PERSON] definitely means you must be a little bit [TYPE OF PERSON] too.

          • Mango@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I don’t hate them and I don’t do that with me or against me nonsense. I’m just not gonna play along with their fantasy. There’s a lot of things I’m not and wish I were but I don’t get the benefit of making everyone around me pretend that’s the case so I can keep myself in an illusion.

            • Zink@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              And I think it’s worth making respect and compassion of others a higher priority then pedantically reminding them about their current or at-birth genitals and/or chromosomes.

              I mean, even if you have an irrefutable philosophical/logical argument about how it is WRONG to accept trans-ness, I think I’m still just going to be nice to the people I meet, and treat them how they would like to be treated.

              • Mango@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Ok, well I want you to treat me like I’m a god. I’ve always felt that way since birth and this human shit feels really displacing.

                • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  You’re not being asked to treat anyone special, you’re being ask to treat them like people. If the way you treat women is vastly different than the way you treat men because you see them as merely objects to fuck then you are an asshole.

                  • Mango@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    No, this is asking for special treatment 100%. I treat literally all people with a facade to keep them away. Literally nobody can make me address them in any special way.

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              The problem with that is that if always results in discrimination against cis women who don’t look feminine enough.

              • Mango@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                THAT is your problem?

                Look. If someone is ugly, people will like them less and there’s absolutely nothing that will ever change that. Welcome to simp world.

                • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes, you’ve made it clear you only care to treat women with any amount of respect if you’re trying to fuck them.

                  I’m talking about situations where psychos start yelling at cis women using the bathroom because they’ve convinced themselves that she’s trans.

                  • Mango@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    I don’t wanna fuck any women. Also why should I treat any category of person with respect just because of their category? I only care about individual people.

        • Blue@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          As a straight dude

          Damn, that closet must be damp with all the sweat and cum.

    • gila@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      What does woke actually mean to you in this context? Are you just referring to the way convervatives have appropriated it? Because that’s exactly what woke is